FINAL POSITION PAPER
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A Paper Presented to Dr. Gary Barnes
Dallas Theological Seminary
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In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course
BC101OL Christian Counseling
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by Mike H. Lei
August 6, 2009
I believe Christian Counseling can occur in 4 different contexts. I will go through each one and focus on pastoral counseling as the application model. I believe that lay counseling and pastoral counseling can greatly benefit church health and growth. For this discussion, I will focus on the lay counseling and pastoral counseling models. I believe Christian counseling is a key to healing and spiritual growth in the body of Christ. There is a lot of brokenness in the world that needs healing for the heart. What better way to reach the world than for the church to provide such healing? Today, people are going to secular sources for their problems. Even though secular counseling can help people learn to cope with their problems, they still don’t receive the same kind of redemptive healing that comes from God. The goal of Christian counseling is for the person to be healthy mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. One of the key goal of Christian counseling is for the person to develop a correct view of God, self, and others. Christian counseling will help a person work toward becoming more Christ-like or sanctified. This means the person will be addressing personal sin issues, bad habits, and relationship issues with God and others. While there is a great potential for Christian counseling to be practiced in the church-context, we need to have good policies in place for the long-term health and growth of such lay counseling program.
The first Christian counseling context is in a friendship or lay person counseling model. This type of counseling can be done by any Christian who is interested in helping another person with a problem. The Christian lay person can be trained in counseling or not. There are a lot of people who need someone who can listen to them and care for them. There may be too many people in the church who needs counseling for the church staff to handle. Many people may try to cope with their problems until a major crisis happens. Thus, the church staff has only enough resources to put out fires. It’s better to address small problems before they become big problems. That’s why today health insurance companies spend more money and efforts to promote a healthy lifestyle to prevent medical problems before they occur. For example, we may go to the doctor when we have a sore throat instead of waiting until we are really sick to go see the doctor. In the same way, it’s better to have counseling available for people to address their problems before it gets too serious.
I believe everyone can find some counseling useful, not just for the very serious cases. Sin is a universal problem. We live in a fallen world. No one can claim to be without sin or not be affected by the sins in the world. Even a person who grew up in a very healthy Christian family may need counseling because they are also a sinner. There may be attitudes of pride that can hinder a person from being real with self and others. For those who grew up in non-Christian environment, there are a lot of value adjustment that needs to take place to have a correct view of self and the world. Sadly, many times people can be dysfunctional even though they think they are pursuing God and serving Him. Will all the focus on inner healing detract us from sharing the gospel and doing the work of discipleship? I believe we need to see the importance of being healthy in order to help others. The blind can’t lead the blind. Thus, we need to be open to whatever changes and healings God wants to do in our life. It’s good for the whole church to believe and promote this view. We should not think that we are beyond getting Christian counseling, just as we don’t think we will stop struggling with sin. The church should help members find Christian counseling resources, not pretend there’s no need for counseling.
The basic requirements for a lay counselor are: be a follower of Jesus Christ, knows the bible, willing to walk with the person through the struggle with prayer and scripture, can listen with sympathy, can speak truth in love, and can speak comforting and encouraging words. I would prefer this person not be a new Christian since they will be leading the other person spiritually in the counseling relationship. I believe the mature believers in the church should be considered for this ministry. Those with spiritual gifts of discernment, mercy, and encouragement would be good candidates to be a lay counselor.
The Stephen Ministry is a lay counseling church ministry. I believe this is a great ministry for the church to have. However, the requirement is 50 hours of training for the lay counselor. The lay counselor only counsels 1 person at a time. This is a supervised ministry. The lay counselor must be committed to serve a minimum of two years in the lay counseling ministry. The counseling is kept confidential. The counseling relationship is set up by the leader. A good lay counseling program is the key to the success of such a program. We need lay people in the church who can keep good boundaries. It is required that we keep confidential sensitive things discussed in deacon boards and church committees. Therefore, we should expect the same level of confidentiality with the lay counselor. The people will only open up if they feel it’s safe to share the private things from their life. There may be potential for awkwardness if people at church are also our counselors. That’s why the person coordinating such counseling relationship must carefully select the right person. For example, it must be the same gender. And both sides need to feel comfortable with the arrangement. Again, I feel keeping confidentiality is critical to this type of ministry. The whole ministry may be impacted if confidentiality is compromised.
The second context is in pastoral counseling. The pastor is theologically trained and can provide more concrete counseling to a person with theological or faith related problems. The pastor can also deal with sin issues and problems or crisis that occurs in a person’s life. The pastor’s main purpose is to look after the spiritually well-being of the person. The pastor should also care about the whole person, which includes the physical, emotional, and mental aspects. The pastor can give general advice and counseling for issues that are not theological or faith-related, but may refer the person to other professionals – such as doctors, counselors, or other mental health professionals if he sees the need. Most people may first try to solve their problem with friends, family, or relatives. They may go to the pastor when they need more help with a spiritual, emotional, or psychological problem. In the class, we learned that 42% of hurting people go first to their spiritual leader, while 29% of hurting people go first to their medical doctor. Usually, they would be referred to the professional counselor when they, the pastor, or others feel the problem is outside of their area and requires more extensive professional counseling. I feel the pastor may sometimes take too much burden for counseling that is outside of his responsibility. We need to watch for clear boundaries when the problem is outside of the pastor’s boundary. The pastor must set a limited amount of time for counseling otherwise he won’t be able to perform his other functions, such as sermon preparation, meetings, visitations, and training others. I believe about 10-20% of the pastor’s time should be allocated to counseling. I believe the pastor should limit how many “sessions” a person has with him about a particular problem before the pastor refers the person to get professional help. If a person requires more extensive counseling, he must go to a professional counselor. The pastor should focus on spiritual development of individuals in the church and the development of the goals of the church.
The third context is with a professional Christian counselor. These counselors are usually distinguished from secular counselors. They may be referred by the pastor or others familiar with Christian counseling. The professional counselor can be a psychologist or psychiatrist. When the person comes for professional counseling, they are acknowledging their problem is not a problem with faith or spiritual walk, but with something deeper that requires more extensive counseling. A Christian counselor usually graduated from seminary with a Masters in biblical counseling. The Dallas Seminary curriculum is a 90 credits degree program, which includes all the basic bible and theology courses as well as the counseling courses. The Christian counselor must also meet the requirements of the state to be licensed as a professional counselor. I really hope that the church will hire more Christian counselors on their staff. First of all, it will encourage more people to go into this field. It will also help those with Christian Counseling degree to fully utilize their education. If they go into a secular counseling office, they may not be able to fully use their training in Christian counseling. By hiring these Christian counseling graduates, the church can develop a counseling ministry to the community. The community person who doesn’t know where to go for counseling can come find help at church. There may be a fee charge for the counseling sessions, but it will be a better rate than going to secular counseling. This means the pastor doesn’t have to take the responsibility to counsel all the people who comes through the door of the church. The pastor can then focus on the ministry of prayer and the Word. Finally, Christian counseling can be in a specific expertise model where the counselor is trained and experienced in a particular issue – such as marriage, addictions, or crisis recovery. In the class, we watched Pam Stenzel giving a lecture to teenagers about abstinence. She has a lot of experience in counseling teenage pregnancy girls and has a passion to communicate the dangers of sex outside marriage to the young people. She would be an expert to talk to in this field and can provide the specific information for this issue. The church may think about hiring such experts to talk to the youths, parents, and adults about various topics. If the church has limited budget, the church may encourage members to attend special seminars in other places. The purpose is that the church tries to do the best to provide or refer resources to meet the needs of the members. Will all these special seminars detract the church from the goal of evangelism and discipleship? If the church sees these ministries as outreach opportunities to the community, it can help the members as well as those the members want to invite to church. I believe a lot of the problems faced by Christians are also faced by non-Christians. Christian counseling provides the context for people to get advice for their problems from a Christian point of view with knowledge from both psychology and theology. We can expose non-Christians to biblical ideas through these special talks from Christian counselors.
If the church sees Christian counseling as an important part of spiritual growth, church will encourage people to get such help. It will add legitimacy to people getting counseling because they know they are not being strange for getting counseling. As an Asian person, I believe there is a view that most people don’t need counseling, and it’s only for those people we hope is not one of us. However, if we view Christian counseling as important part of spiritual growth, it will encourage us to seek it and tell others about our experience. What better way to promote Christian counseling than for the pastor to talk about it as part of the sermon and tell the members the benefits of counseling and dispel any taboos associated with going to professional counseling? I would suggest for the church to hire a Christian counselor to have a session with each person on the deacon or elder board. That way they can get a taste of what Christian counseling feels like and can tell the congregation about the benefits of Christian counseling. I see the need for churches to be more informed and experienced in Christian counseling.
The bible tells believers to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”(Gal 6:2). Therefore, as believers, we are to carry each other’s burdens by caring and being compassionate to each other. At the same time, we know that only through Jesus, can our burdens be lifted. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, “”Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Thus, we encourage each other to come to God for healing and refreshment. Christian counseling is an avenue for us to practice the ministry of mercy and healing. When we experienced compassion and healing, we are able to show compassion and love to others. Christian counseling should teach us that as God’s people we play a vital part in the healing process of other people in the body of Christ. We believe the agent of change in a person is the Holy Spirit. We pray for God to change us and others. We believe it’s a supernatural process. However, Christian counseling provides training for us to engage ourselves and others in the process. The bible tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). We have a duty to care for each other in the church. Christian counseling gives us a way to meet the heart-healing needs of the church.
In summary, there are 4 Christian counseling contexts: lay counseling, pastoral counseling, professional Christian counseling, and professional Christian Counseling Experts. I believe Christian counseling should be practiced in the church context as well as in professional counseling. In the church context, Christian counseling can be done by a lay counselor or a pastor. The goal of Christian counseling is to glorify God by helping people deal with the problems in their live and grow spiritually in the process. The Christian counselor believes that God is the source of the solution, healing, and growth. The Christian counselor believes that only through faith in Jesus Christ, having the Holy Spirit can we truly be transformed. The goal of the Christian counselor is to be used by God to help the person deal with the issues in life through the healing God provides. The resources God provides include the Holy Spirit, prayer, the bible, confession, forgiveness, and other Christians. The change in a person’s life occurs as the person trusts God and commits to obey God in whatever circumstance the person is in. The Christian counselor provides compassion, empathy, biblical advice, and spiritual support to the person.
I hope that more Christians will experience healing through Christian counseling. I hope more churches can provide Christian counseling resources for the members. I hope there will be more Christian counselors to serve in churches and professional counseling offices. I hope I can personally gain more experience receiving and giving Christian counseling. May the Christian counseling resources be more available for the average person in the church.
Finally, Christian counseling displays the character of God. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4) May God be glorified as we comfort others through their trials as we are comforted in our trials.
